Patient images such as preoperative MRI scans may be registered to surgical tracking systems to enable the tracking of surgical instruments and the registration of intraoperative images relative to the MRI scans. During surgical procedures, however, the registration between the preoperative images and the tracking system can become inaccurate, due to movement of the patient, deformation of tissue, shifting of tracking equipment, and the like.
Correcting an inaccurate registration traditionally requires a time-consuming interruption to the surgical procedure. The interruption may be omitted, but doing so introduces inaccuracies in image registrations, and may result in medical personnel being provided with incorrect information as to the location of surgical instruments such as imaging probes.